November Hole - Long Churn - 17th Oct 2010
Sunday October 17th 2010
Members present: Imogen Shepherd, Kevin Francis, Laz Abbott, Marcus Roby
Report by Laz Abbott
I was quite up for this: on at least three occasions, I've had a look at the inlet from November Hole which is on the left about ten yards downstream from Dr Bannister's Handbasin. On each of these occasions, it has been a fresher trip (rarely been down there on any other occasion!) and I've only had a few minutes whilst waiting for people to come down the handline into Dr Bannister's. It also looks quite grim: a flat-out bedding plane and it is difficult to tell how far it goes. I'd never got any further than climbing up to the bedding plane and then coming out. On this occasion, we would be attacking it from the other end...
I was first to find the entrance in a small shake-hole about fifty yards from the tree at the entrance to Borrins Moor which was just poking over the horizon. At the bottom was what looked like a six-inch diameter hole with lots of foliage over it. The others came over and, on poking the hole, we found that there was a slot big enough to fit down and it dropped a few metres to the floor.
To me it looked a nightmare: smooth walls with lots of green slime on them. Kev squirmed down first and found that the slot was a nice width to wedge yourself in and there were actually quite a few little ledges to use that couldn't be seen from above.
At the bottom of the entrance climb it goes off in two directions...away from Borrins Moor is (apparently!) a crawl in 30-cm deep mud which gets too tight. Nice! We went the other way which heads towards Borrins Moor and Long Churn.
A couple of metres of low crawling over stones enlarges to give a larger but crawling passage. There is a duck (fairly easy: the water levels were quite low) and the passageway narrows into a "tortuous fissure" (as described in Northern Caves 2). This is a twisty, turny crawl laying on your side with quite a few right-angle and z-bends in it, although none of the bends was particularly tight or awkward. The tightest (right-hand) corner is followed by a boss sticking out at just the correct height to grab your leg as you go round the corner: beware and keep your legs up!
Almost directly after this, Kev got stuck in the passageway in front of me and physically didn't fit through. At this point, I was dreading having to go back through some of the right-angle corners we had just done...
I backed up as best I could to give him room to reverse and climb up a metre or so into the rift to go over the top of the tight bit (Imogen got further through this bit but then got quite wedged, I hear!). After a couple of metres, it is safe to drop back to the bottom of the rift and continue on.
A few more z-bends further on and there is a three-metre climb down. As with the entrance, there are no obvious foot-holds but it is a good width to wedge yourself into. Kev went first and I followed down the climb. Kev watched Imogen and Marcus down the climb and sent me on to look at the duck.
Several piles of foam sitting by the side of a big, dark pool of water. Not looking good! After easing myself into a big pool, it turned out to be a fairly easy duck that looked worse than it was. Carrying on laying down in the pool, a further two ducks were found. I did remove my helmet for the second one so that my head fitted round a flake (rather than putting my face in the water!); the third one was easier.
At this point, I could hear lots of running water: Dr Bannister's! A climb over a block and drop down again into a bedding-plane crawl for about five metres and I had reached Long Churn!
We'd done it! Nothing particularly hard but a fair bit of stuff in a short distance. Not one for beginners but this could be a good one for "spare" experienced people to do when there are too many of them on freshers' trips!
Later on, as we were getting changed, we told some cavers walking past where we had been. Their response was "why?!!". Fair point, I suppose! Maybe that's a bit harsh.
